The Five Letter Word is happy. My working definition is the willingness to participate in the activities of life. Some formal reckoning with mental illness is essential to well-being (Duh!) and that’s why this week’s topic is mental health and coming into contact with people in life who are suffering. That’s most of us. The rest are probably psychopaths. (So they’re happier more of the time, right?) If I keep up writing like this I’m gonna have to give Jon Ronson a co writing credit. So I better start getting a little more specific. Here we go.

Smart went crazy. Okay, 90s post hardcore band names aside, this is a kind of obscure aphoristic shorthand of a description of a life arc. It’s not a very nice aphorism. Few are. (In the mental health field the word crazy is a pejorative term bordering on an epithet.) Nevertheless, I have come into contact with people who fit the bill and I have struggled quite a bit to recognize what was going on. Before I turned thirty, I realized that mental illness is not a super-power. It’s a disability. Maybe you got that earlier in life. Congratulations. Here’s a moment in my life that was instructional as well as very painful: In the early 90s I was in a band that was very important to me. That band was called Soursong and there was a bipolar person who was a friend of one of the guys. He was older (maybe 25) and lots of people (Mostly dudes. All too young to buy alcohol and without weed connections.) looked up to him. These were my bandmates and friends associated with the band who lived in the sprawling (still newish) Northdale subdivision outside of the City of Tampa. (New Tampa was still some evil glimmer in a developer’s eyes at this point. Or maybe they were already building it. I dunno.)  Anyways, Soursong was a very communal and intimate group and these characteristics, even with the strengths that come with shared passion, would break us apart. I can’t put our entire downfall on this one individual. We were very young and ambitious. It felt like we were almost doing some kind of sorcery. But this was the first time that I can recall encountering a person with bipolar disorder and recognizing it as such.

There are tons of stories about this guy. Some are humorous. Some are very serious and are about sexual abuse and dangerous psychotic episodes. Lots of drugs in these narratives. If you know me you know about the guy but that’s not where I’m going with this. The point is that this individual was a living embodiment of the smart went crazy maxim. In his past he was seen as a gifted student. When he was up (but not all the way up) he was quite the raconteur. I observed that he was way ahead of everyone I knew in terms of computer science. He used the internet. Maybe. I think. He definitely built his own computer and thought of himself as a kind of philosopher/wise man. Nevertheless, he couldn’t hack college or hold down a job. He lived at home. His illness caused him to be hospitalized regularly. All the while he was implying that the sickness was also the source of genius. Which, goes without saying, is dangerous. Other people put forth the genius narrative, too, getting us into murky proto-cult leader territory. And I would kind of go along, not because it didn’t seem dangerous. It just seemed like all aspects of my life as an artist were dangerous. Being in a band that is actively playing lots of shows and getting a really good response is an incredibly stimulating experience-- one which is very distorted and heightened, but really, really fun. Along with all this fun, other stuff happened. People got robbed, beaten, and overdosed. Cars were crashed. In other words, normal life was not very normal. But it's what we wanted.

It wasn’t until an incident in his bedroom with a group of us that I knew I needed to get some distance. He was manic, the TV was on with some ‘70s reruns. I think it was a show called Banacek. Throughout, he kept blurting out, “Bana-Chek!” Which was kind of amusing. His upstairs bedroom window was open. We lit cigarettes with a ridiculously oversized novelty Zippo lighter. He showed us the computer that he built. Several books on philosophy and history were referred to and passed around. It was quite the multimedia lecture. And then the afternoon went to shit. He went to his closet and retrieved a case containing an AK-47. His father had brought this back as a war trophy from Vietnam. He removed the weapon from the case and excitedly handled it and commented that it still had ammunition. In his assessment the rifle was in excellent condition. Remarkable really, since it was over twenty years old and had travelled the world. I do not remember who was with me that day. Certainly it was one or two of my bandmates, maybe one of the Northdale friends. There’s a funny tunnel-vision kind of thing about these kinds of memories. I remember him and I was certainly present. But I just remember that other people were with us. I don’t even know how many. Nevertheless, we quickly made our excuses to leave-- band practice or some muttered something. I still remember the tense feeling of making it to the stairway landing and out the front door. Oddly, we just got right on with the day: the always intense way of life when you’re in a band. We did not report this to anyone. Why would we? His dad was a Hillsborough County Sheriff. We were transgressive punks. Nothing to be done. How else are we supposed to get booze?

The story ends a day or two later with him being removed from the roof of his house after firing live ammunition into the air and being subsequently hospitalized. After that, I distanced myself. Probably not as quickly as I should have, but I now fell firmly into the camp that had sussed the danger. He certainly had accumulated detractors along the way.  He could easily be seen as a loser creep with a Jesus complex and dismissed immediately by those sensing a fraud. I was not as quick to judge, and held my bandmate (his close friend) in very high esteem.There was of course other stuff going on simultaneously in my life. I had at least one roommate in college who I’m sure was a psychopath. My twenties were like a master class in mental health issues and transgressive behavior.

In the Embrace lyric it says, “Death is not glamorous.” A similar sentiment should be expressed for mental illness. Being sick does not give you superpowers. Manic confusion is not an intuitive advantage.  When I’m in an empathetic mindset, I see the genius identity as a scrap of self to cling to. Something to make trips to the shrink, hospitalizations, and everyday life bearable. This flawed belief could be the only coping strategy he has. I look back at myself and worry how much  of this junk I carry around. It’s not a question of if I share the belief, it’s a question of proportionality. To me the possibility of being an ordinary human being in terms of perception, creativity, and intelligence is absolutely terrifying. Why not be the hero of your own story? That doesn’t seem so transgressive. And yet I fear being unable to recognize dangerous solipsistic tendencies when they arise in myself. There must be a mechanism to keep the bad stuff in check. Hence, my definition of happy: the willingness to participate in the activities of life. Mr. Dawson (my algebra teacher at Buchanan Jr. High School) used to say, “ Math is not a spectator sport.” The same could be said for living. I’m just trying to stay on the field and do what I can do, knowing that I have not been picked as quarterback. Goddam. Sports metaphors fall apart quick!

There’s a new category on the web log. It’s called Five Letter Word. Hey, “What’s the five letter word?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell you. It’s happy. Some years ago at the library, I noticed a recently published book, I think it was called On Happiness (or some other nonsense) and it seemed to be a kind of pop-psychology/pop-philosophy self-help kind of dealy. I’m not gonna research what I saw at the library and maybe heard about on Fresh Air or whatever. There will be no reference hyperlink in this post. It’s not gonna work and it’s gonna be the wrong book anyway. I didn’t read whatever it was, okay? My memory sucks. Reference points and documentation are beside the point & is kind of getting involved in the perpetual & disposable personality cult hype engine hoo-hah. I believe that shit can get dangerous to one’s sense of self knowledge. For real. Best to just kind of pitch that into the memory hole, okay? For the sake of this thing suffice it to say that I did kind of get the itch to think about what happiness is. Over time, and utilizing my usual method, I kind of let the question fester in my subconscious. Happiness is a thing I want of course, even if I’m not sure about how it works or even what it is. I mulled it over for nine years or so. But what I did start to intuit right away is this: getting fucked up all weekend long and then grinding through a work week was not a happy way to go through life. That, and getting involved in activities such as hitting a gong and wearing robes, sniffing weird incense and listening to the music of gourds was not going to do the trick, either. I needed some practical junk to push around to know if I was doing it right.

The way I approach life and the way I put things together in my brain is all in terms of definitions. Creating and testing language models… And very recently I created a definition for the word happiness. It’s this: Happiness is the willingness to participate in the activities of life. So that’s it. Over here at Five Letter Word, we’ll keep washing that rock and maybe, every once in awhile, get something going, something that works that you can use. Okay, cheers!